The axles were pretty simple, just two rods with some shoulders on either end. Testing with a magnet showed that the real axles were magnetic, and therefore maybe made with some kind of carbon (non-stainless) steel. We guessed that Black Diamond used a medium carbon steel that compromised between strength and ductility, so we went with that. I used the manual lathe to turn down some raw stock.
The axle plates are the flat pieces of stainless steel on the ends of the axles that hold the lobes on. I used the large shop shear to cut out rectangular pieces of stock to the right size, and then used the grinder to round the ends by hand, and then just drilled out the holes for the axles.
To keep the axle plates attached to the end of the axles, I just used a hammer to "peen" (the technical term for "smash", although admittedly slowly and carefully) the ends of the axles into "mushrooms" around the axle plates. This looked to be the same method that the real cam uses, but we guess that instead of a hammer, Black Diamond probably uses a hydraulic press to smoothly and accurately rivet them on. The result looks the same, so hopefully that means it will act the same. This is a fairly important connection, since if the cam is loaded in a crooked orientation, the lobes and axle housing will want to slide down the axles, and the end plates are the only thing keeping it together.
The axle plates are the flat pieces of stainless steel on the ends of the axles that hold the lobes on. I used the large shop shear to cut out rectangular pieces of stock to the right size, and then used the grinder to round the ends by hand, and then just drilled out the holes for the axles.
To keep the axle plates attached to the end of the axles, I just used a hammer to "peen" (the technical term for "smash", although admittedly slowly and carefully) the ends of the axles into "mushrooms" around the axle plates. This looked to be the same method that the real cam uses, but we guess that instead of a hammer, Black Diamond probably uses a hydraulic press to smoothly and accurately rivet them on. The result looks the same, so hopefully that means it will act the same. This is a fairly important connection, since if the cam is loaded in a crooked orientation, the lobes and axle housing will want to slide down the axles, and the end plates are the only thing keeping it together.
The axle housing is the largish block of aluminum that the axles are threaded through, and the stem is attached to. I took a raw block of aluminum, turned it down on a mill so that it was a simple cuboid with the right dimensions, drilled the axle holes and then reamed them precisely down to size. Then I used a rotary table to create the nice rounded corners, and drilled and reamed out the large center hole that the stem will slot into.